A Lost Art Rediscovered includes a fully illustrated catalogue of all known tiles produced in the region of Constantinople, including the substantial collection owned by the Walters Art Museum, as well as those belonging to museums and private collections around the world. Some tiles included in the catalogue are now lost; the discovery of others is reported here for the first time. A series of scholarly essays gives the ceramics their rightful place in the study of Byzantine art and treats aspects of patronage, manufacture, function, ornament, and cultural significance. This comprehensive publication heralds the first large-scale, permanent installation of the Byzantine tiles in the collection of the Walters Art Museum. Book jacket.

Told with consummate skill by the writer of the bestselling, award-winning A Civil Action, The Lost Painting is a remarkable synthesis of history and detective story. An Italian village on a hilltop near the Adriatic coast, a decaying palazzo facing the sea, and in the basement, cobwebbed and dusty, lit by a single bulb, an archive unknown to scholars. Here, a young graduate student from Rome, Francesca Cappelletti, makes a discovery that inspires a search for a work of art of incalculable value, a painting lost for almost two centuries. The artist was Caravaggio, a master of the Italian Baroque. He was a genius, a revolutionary painter, and a man beset by personal demons. Four hundred years ago, he drank and brawled in the taverns and streets of Rome, moving from one rooming house to another, constantly in and out of jail, all the while painting works of transcendent emotional and visual power. He rose from obscurity to fame and wealth, but success didn’t alter his violent temperament. His rage finally led him to commit murder, forcing him to flee Rome a hunted man. He died young, alone, and under strange circumstances. Caravaggio scholars estimate that between sixty and eighty of his works are in existence today. Many others–no one knows the precise number–have been lost to time. Somewhere, surely, a masterpiece lies forgotten in a storeroom, or in a small parish church, or hanging above a fireplace, mistaken for a mere copy. Prizewinning author Jonathan Harr embarks on an spellbinding journey to discover the long-lost painting known as The Taking of Christ–its mysterious fate and the circumstances of its disappearance have captivated Caravaggio devotees for years. After Francesca Cappelletti stumbles across a clue in that dusty archive, she tracks the painting across a continent and hundreds of years of history. But it is not until she meets Sergio Benedetti, an art restorer working in Ireland, that she finally manages to assemble all the pieces of the puzzle. Praise for The Lost Painting “Jonathan Harr has gone to the trouble of writing what will probably be a bestseller . . . rich and wonderful. . . . In truth, the book reads better than a thriller. . . . If you're a sucker for Rome, and for dusk . . . [you'll] enjoy Harr's more clearly reported details about life in the city.”—The New York Times Book Review “Jonathan Harr has taken the story of the lost painting, and woven from it a deeply moving narrative about history, art and taste—and about the greed, envy, covetousness and professional jealousy of people who fall prey to obsession. It is as perfect a work of narrative nonfiction as you could ever hope to read.”—The Economist

Long before GPS, Google Earth, and global transit, humans traveled vast distances using only environmental clues and simple instruments. John Huth asks what is lost when modern technology substitutes for our innate capacity to find our way. Encyclopedic in breadth, weaving together astronomy, meteorology, oceanography, and ethnography, The Lost Art of Finding Our Way puts us in the shoes, ships, and sleds of early navigators for whom paying close attention to the environment around them was, quite literally, a matter of life and death. Haunted by the fate of two young kayakers lost in a fog bank off Nantucket, Huth shows us how to navigate using natural phenomena—the way the Vikings used the sunstone to detect polarization of sunlight, and Arab traders learned to sail into the wind, and Pacific Islanders used underwater lightning and “read” waves to guide their explorations. Huth reminds us that we are all navigators capable of learning techniques ranging from the simplest to the most sophisticated skills of direction-finding. Even today, careful observation of the sun and moon, tides and ocean currents, weather and atmospheric effects can be all we need to find our way. Lavishly illustrated with nearly 200 specially prepared drawings, Huth’s compelling account of the cultures of navigation will engross readers in a narrative that is part scientific treatise, part personal travelogue, and part vivid re-creation of navigational history. Seeing through the eyes of past voyagers, we bring our own world into sharper view.

This text describes how Yiddish storytelling became the politics of rescue for generations of displaced Jewish artists, embodying their hopes and fears in the languages of tradition. It suggests that there lies an aesthetic and moral sensibility totally at odds with Jewish humour and piety.

In this must-have book for all fans of Oz big and small, artist and visionary Gabriel Gale brings to vivid life all the creatures from L. Frank Baum’s beloved series, from the iconic characters in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to many others that are visualized here for the first time. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was the best-selling American children’s book of the twentieth century, and the classic 1939 movie of this quintessential American fairy tale left a permanent mark on the hearts and imaginations of devoted fans throughout the world. In THE ART OF OZ: WITCHES, WIZARDS, AND WONDERS BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD artist and Oz archeologist Gabriel Gale brings to life all the creatures and inhabitants from L. Frank Baum’s beloved series, many illustrated here for the first time: wicked witches and their armies, mythical beasts, elemental fairies, robots, insects, one-legged and two-sided people, and many more sky, land, sea, and underground creatures. THE ART OF OZ also debuts the first-ever “Google Map” of the Land of Oz! Gabriel Gale has mapped the country and animated all the creatures he found there. He has sketched Emerald City the buildings and habitats of the enchanted Land. Through spectacular illustrations, in original and precise style, Gale portrays each character in detail, often with attention to anatomy, structure, size and scale. Gale’s fantastical, vivid, and delightful renderings are also accompanied by excerpts and drawings from the fourteen books in Baum’s Oz series and the most famous inhabitants of Oz—Professor H.M. Woggle-Bug, T.E., Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, Toto, Glinda the Good, and the Wizard—add context to this magical endeavor This is the perfect book for the whole family to share and for anyone entranced by the fantasy and everlasting magic of Oz